


The Approaching Curve

by onewarmline



Series: The Approaching Curve [1]
Category: Game Grumps, youtube - Fandom
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Baseball, F/M, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 03:49:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14179923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onewarmline/pseuds/onewarmline
Summary: Arin Hanson is one of baseball's top prospects in the Indianapolis Devils' farm system. There's a lot about the baseball life for him to learn - from his teammates, his opponents, his general manager Brian, his maybe-ex Suzy, and a tragically unhip but lovable clubhouse attendant named Dan. The road to the big show is winding, and even Arin can't anticipate everything that will come his way when he steps up to the plate.(More tags, characters and summary to come as the story progresses.)





	The Approaching Curve

**Author's Note:**

> In order for Arin to be starting in Double-A minor league baseball, everyone in this story is aged back ~10 years. Arin and Ross are 20, Dan is 28, Brian is 31. The setting is still ~201X, and everything else about them is more or less the same, apart from the things that aren't.
> 
> Title from the song of the same name by Rise Against.

Arin opened his eyes before his alarm went off. 

He stared at the popcorn ceiling and the unpleasant water stain directly over his head, taking measured breaths to try and settle his nerves. Some kids waited all year for Christmas or their birthday. Arin waited for Spring Training.

By all rights, Arin didn’t look like the sports type; honestly, he’d been the ‘remedial PE type’ for a long time. But every spring, baseball teams would roll into Florida, filling his quiet town with impossibly chiseled god-men and the fans who came to watch them do windmill stretches and throw simulated games. You couldn’t help but dream the dream, even if you knew at heart that you were ultimately destined for the bleachers and a replica jersey.

He played Little League because it was easier than getting picked on, and the running was limited. Hitting came naturally to him, and that was fun enough, but it didn’t present much of a challenge and playing in the field was boring – kids can’t hit very hard, so you spend a lot of time waiting around for nothing. Being the catcher seemed the most boring position of all. You spent seven innings playing catch in a squat. He’d never be caught dead doing that.

It took convincing and light bribery from Arin’s dad to get him into a helmet and pads, when the kid who had been catching for his Under 13 team broke his wrist. Catchers didn’t just squat and catch and throw and wait, Arin learned, as he carefully removed _Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball_ from its packaging. Catchers dictated the game. They had to know all the hitters, their strengths and weaknesses. They had to know their pitchers and tell them what pitch to throw when. Catchers learned all the umpires and their quirks so they could get an edge. 

Catchers controlled the whole game, at least as much as anyone could. Hitting was muscle memory and timing. Catching was a challenge, and Arin wanted it. 

While his teammates learned the finer art of stealthily sticking bubblegum to each other’s hats, Arin leaned over the railing, watching and learning. He could tell when a pitcher wasn’t repeating their motion, or when a batter couldn’t read the movement of a breaking ball. In the time when there was no internet to speak of, he would sit with a notebook in front of the national game every Sunday night and write ‘scouting reports’ about all the biggest stars. He didn’t know all the right words, and sometimes he couldn’t tell a splitter from a changeup, but he learned. 

In the end, he’d accidentally become a jock, in his own very personal way.

The craziest part was getting drafted out of high school. He had his pick of colleges, despite his… _spotty_ report cards. Baseball programs across the south were doing everything they could to court him, promising that he could major in underwater basketweaving if he wanted to. Arin loved learning, but he didn’t love class, and the thought of even two years of real college made him feel a little queasy. 

In the end, he never had to sit down with his offer letters. He practically showed up to short season fall league with his cap and gown still on. He tried to ignore the press, what there was for a kid like him, but when his mom printed out an article that named him one of the top 100 prospects in the country, he got a cheap picture frame and put it on his nightstand.

The article had faded some over the last two years, carried with him on buses and puddle-jumpers between low-A and high-A. The adrenaline hadn’t faded at all, even in the dark of an early February morning. He wouldn’t be leaving Tampa for almost a month, ultimately bound for Jersey City according to prospect watchers. For a little while, he’d be here at home, taking warmups and field drills next to the guys he wanted to be when he grew up. 

Arin Hanson, the weird chubby kid who got picked on for wearing pink and loving video games until he hit puberty and the weight room (in that order), made the local paper, then the state paper, and then a tiny paragraph in Sports Illustrated’s season preview. Maybe there was a full article, and more, in his future.

Hopefully not the cover, though – Arin knew nothing good ever came from being on the cover.

  


* * *

  


Arin’s bag hit the floor in the locker room at 6 AM, which was precisely five minutes after the security guards opened up the facility and took their positions. He made a point to greet all of them, catch up with the ones he’d met last year about their wives and kids and bad knees. It was easy to be an asshole in this sport, and easier still if you’re a kid with a lot of hype who never had to take a midterm. He’d seen what not playing the game “the right way” could do to taint his reputation before he’d ever seen the majors. He was good, sure, but nobody was special, and he couldn’t afford to get chewed up and spit out before he could even legally drink.

He was prepared to be alone for hours, but as he traded his civilian clothes for brand new workout gear in cardinal red and navy, he spotted a clubhouse attendant he didn’t recognize hanging name plates. He was older than Arin by a few years, all arms and legs, and his face almost entirely obscured by a halo of tight curls. His Devils polo was so new that he’d neglected to take the price tag off, and it stuck out from under his collar. If it was still there by the time other players showed up, this guy was going to get razzed the entire day.

Arin crossed the distance between them. “Oh dude, uh, hey.” 

The attendant looked up from his clipboard in surprise, also clearly expecting to be alone. “Oh! Hi, uh - Mr. Hanson?” 

Arin pulled a face. “My dad is Mr. Hanson. Call me Arin.” Without thinking, he reached up behind the man’s neck and yanked the tag off in one motion. The plastic snapped with a quiet _snk_ and he held it up with a smile. “Leave the rookie shit to the rookies, man.” 

The attendant started to blush across his neck and he made an embarrassed noise. “Wow, um. Thanks. Don’t tell anybody about the one with my name sewn in my underwear.”

That got a laugh out of Arin, and the attendant started to laugh, too. He stuck out an enormous hand that eclipsed Arin’s entirely. His grip was firm, if bony. “It’s Dan, by the way. My name. Not my underwear. I don’t name my underwear.”

“Can’t get too attached to underwear. You never know where you’re going to leave it.” Arin grinned toothily.

Dan dissolved into a peal of giggles. “I know exactly where _you’re_ going to leave it.” He gestured expansively at the locker room. “Somewhere in here, for me to pick up.” 

“Geez, at least take me out to dinner first,” Arin teased, fluttering his eyelashes in the least seductive act in recorded human history.

“Only guys who make BP’s top 100. 101, forget it.” Dan seemed pleased that he got Arin to blush a little, at the top of his cheeks. “Congrats, dude, that’s rad.”

Arin coughed, suddenly feeling awkward and not sure why. He heard that all the time. “Oh. Thanks. I uh, I don’t read that stuff too much. It’s bad for your ego.” 

“Suuure,” Dan drawled. “That’s why your Twitter _and_ your Instagram are egoraptor69.”

“How did you—“

Dan stuck out his hand again. “Hi, I’m Dan,” he repeated cheerily. “Clubhouse attendant, social media manager, game operations associate.“

“You do _all_ those jobs?” Arin knew some teams got by on the smallest budget they could, but relying on one guy seemed like a lot.

Dan shrugged one shoulder. “It’s a living.” When Arin didn’t seem convinced, he added, “I mean, I can afford rent and three square Pot Noodles a day. Jersey City isn’t that expensive, anyway.”

“Oh dude, you’re with Jersey City?” That was a relief. Arin would already know a friendly face when he got there. “I think that’s where I’ll be. I mean, unless I blow out my knee in the first split-squad game and spend all year rehabbing.”

“That’s the, uh, spirit?” Dan playfully slugged Arin on the bicep, and his hand bounced back like a rubber ball on concrete. “Jesus christ, dude, you’re… thick.”

“That’s thicc with two Cs when you post about me.” Arin flexed and kissed the muscle, in the second least seductive act in recorded human history. 

Dan rolled his eyes and turned away, trying to hide a smile as he went back to hanging name plates. “Sure thing, _Mr. Hanson._ ”

Arin grinned and turned to his locker to finish changing. Camp was going to be _great_. 

  


* * *

  


Dan was staring, which was impolite, but he had a perfectly good reason.

He leaned on the dugout railing, precariously balanced with his sneakers wedged in chainlink, a Brian-issued team phone was in his hand. (His phone was two generations behind, not good enough for a social media manager, even for a Double-A team.) The big name players had come and gone, off to lift and prepare for the first games of Spring Training, so it was all prospects swinging away at batting practice, with ‘ _the hits of the ‘80s, 90s and today_ ’ playing tinnily in the background. Arin was leaning casually on a bat as he waited his turn, ponytail bobbing up and down as he pointed to the balls disappearing into the late afternoon sun with the coach standing next to him. 

Dan hadn’t been alone with his thoughts in days, and as he took in the atmosphere, it occurred to him how strange it all was. This was his first time working at Spring Training. He’d only come to Tampa in the first place because the Devils’ social media manager was taking care of her sick father and didn’t know if she’d make it to camp. With Opening Day still two months away, and the last of his grandma’s Hanukkah money running dry, Dan was practically out the door before Brian had ended the call and he had both legs in his pants.

He’d spent his time with the Jersey City Sparks politely distant from the sea of fresh-faced good ol’ boys who showed up complaining about the dirty apartments and the bus rides. They were nice kids, mostly, but there was no point in making friends with them. For starters, he had a minimum of five years on them, and he didn’t do babysitting if he wasn’t getting paid. Even if he got to know them, they’d be in another city by the end of the season, if not by the end of the roadtrip. Brian could flip young players like three bedroom houses on HGTV.

Besides all that, none of them were especially interested in a desperately un-hip stick figure with zero athletic ability and an encyclopedic knowledge of Rush’s discography.

Except for Arin. 

From the first day pitchers and catchers reported, when he valiantly saved Dan from a tag on his complimentary team gear, Arin seemed to purposefully find him. He always came into the clubhouse with a wave and smile, or a joke, or a viral video Dan hadn’t seen because he was old and out of touch with today’s youth. He was easy to talk to, especially for a player with as much hype as he had. None of it seemed to go to his head. His sense of humor was silly, and strange, and often more homoerotic than Dan was comfortable with, but it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to be around him every day this summer.

So now Dan was staring at him, phone in position to film Arin’s swings for the masses as he took his turn in the cage. Arin noticed that he was being watched and tipped his chin at Dan to say ‘check _this_ out’. 

He turned back to the batter’s box for another pitch, waggling his elbows and setting his feet. The ball whistled right over the heart of home plate, and when Arin made contact, it echoed like a thunderclap. It disappeared in seconds into the afternoon sun, and clanged loudly off the “PROUD CORPORATE PARTNERS” sign just below the scoreboard. 

Arin let out a whoop and flipped his bat emphatically, over a smattering of wolf-whistles and muttered curse words. Then he blew an exaggerated kiss to Dan and nearly strutted out of the cage.

Biting his lower lip to hide a grin, Dan quickly composed three social media posts at once and hit _send_.

  


* * *

  


**Indianapolis Devils** @IndyDevils • 28 February  
Looks like @egoraptor69 is ready for some sponsorships! Any takers?

  


* * *

  


_“I don’t_ care _what that sheet of lambskin says. I’m not calling you Doctor. You’ll start to get ideas about putting a finger up my ass.”_

_“Don’t insult my profession like that, Leigh Daniel.”_

_Dan and Brian sat thigh to thigh on a fire escape, legs dangling in the cool evening air. The sun was starting to disappear into the horizon, and there was a fierce light flare off the beer bottle Dan was cradling._

_Brian had an empty at his side and was demolishing a second one. If anybody had a right to celebrate by chugging shitty beers, it was him. He had passed his_ viva voce _with no corrections and was now the proud owner of a doctorate in mathematics. Dan couldn’t hope to understand the dissertation, no matter how many times Brian had tried to explain it, but it had impressed Brian’s advisor and his examiners and that was all that mattered._

 _Nearly everyone at the department party had asked Brian what he planned on doing next, where he planned to teach, if he would go abroad. He had deflected every question graciously – he knew how to behave, when it mattered – but Dan was dying to know. Brian hadn’t even told_ him _what the next step was._

_“Maybe that’s your going away present.” Dan waggled his eyebrows, which was not terribly seductive unless one’s turn-ons included Groucho Marx. “Doctor, you have to help me, I have this condition where my asshole is bereft of your—“_

_“So help me, if you finish that sentence, I’m pushing you to your death.” Brian took a long swig from his bottle. “Besides, who said anything about me going away?”_

_“Like a dozen people, minimum,” Dan pointed out._

_Brian grunted. “Well, they don’t know as much as they think they do, doctorates or no.”_

_“But… I mean, you’re going to teach_ somewhere _. Somewhere that isn’t here.” Dan needed to tease a concrete answer out of him. He couldn’t bring himself to put pressure on Brian before the defense was over; the last thing he wanted was for Brian to feel like he was being hurried out the door. But now there was nothing left but the future._

_He had a gut feeling that a comedy band wasn’t in it._

_“It would be very difficult to teach in this apartment,” Brian agreed flatly._

_“Brian, I mean it.”_

_“So do I. You suck at math. And laundry.”_

_“You’re… obfuscating,” Dan grumbled. He hoped that was the right word, on the border of Shitface City as he was._

_“Am I now, Mr. Word-a-Day Calendar?”_

_Dan sighed gustily. “Look, are you really going to make me say it?” Brian opened his mouth, but Dan pressed on before another rejoinder could form. “Fine. Tell me this is over. ”_

_Brian froze with his lips parted, and then clamped them closed._

_“I mean, maybe I already know it’s over.” Dan’s eyes stung and he tried to pretend that they didn’t, even as he blinked furiously. “Maybe I always knew you weren’t going to make music for a living. You knew what you wanted this whole time and worked for it, and I try on majors like cheap novelty thongs and I suck at math and laundry. But I still want to hear you say it.”_

_“I have a job offer,” Brian conceded softly._

_It hurt Dan’s heart for a moment, but relief filled the space just as fast. “Jesus, was that all it took to get a straight answer? That’s awesome, dude. Hogwarts is lucky to have you.”_

_“First of all, Hogwarts doesn’t have math classes, which is just one of their_ many _pedagogical problems.” Brian finished his beer and immediately reached behind him to the half empty six-pack for another. “And it’s not a teaching position.”_

_Dan frowned. “Isn’t that what you do with one of these?”_

_“I suppose. I have some of those offers, too. But it’s not the one I’m thinking of accepting.” Brian’s perpetual monotone was a little soft around the edges; even he wasn’t immune to alcohol. “They finished that new baseball stadium in Jersey City.”_

_Dan frowned_ and _squinted. “Is that supposed to mean anything to me, or are you deflecting again?”_

_Brian made a noise that definitely would have befitted a frustrated professor. “There’s a brand new minor league team going in there. They need a general manager, and… they asked me.”_

_“A professional baseball team needs a math nerd with a doorstop?”_

_Brian smirked. “Who do you think invented all those statistics for that fantasy league you never win?”_

_Dan had to concede the point. Brian had beaten all of their friends three years in a row, until they stopped inviting him to the draft. “So you want to be a professional fantasy baseball player?”_

_“I hadn’t considered it quite like that, but… sure,” said Brian, slightly bemused._

_“Is this just so you don’t have to grade papers?” Dan belched and thumped his chest. He wasn’t in the drinking habit anymore, but one had to make exceptions._

_Brian belched in reply, then frowned at the taste. “I have to read scouting reports. That’s almost as bad.”_

_“Well, I’m happy you get to live out your Revenge of the Nerds fantasy. But I still don’t understand why you’re not thinking about teaching.” Dan swung his long legs over the edge of the fire escape, flexing his feet in the open air. "Didn’t I see envelopes from Stanford and Harvard and shit?”_

_Brian’s eyes narrowed. “Mail theft is a felony.”_

_“Ooh, have I been bad? Are you going to spa—“_

_“To. Your. Death.”_

_“Got it,” Dan said. He finished the beer in his hand and decided against opening another. One of them would need to be sober-ish tomorrow, or neither of them would make it to Monday alive. “But why_ not _them?”_

_For once, Brian didn’t have a quick retort. He chewed on his top lip and let the silence sit for a moment. “Because.”_

_“Try again, Doctor Poker Face McSmartass.”_

_“If I tell you, you’re…” Brian waved his hand back and forth vaguely. “…going to get all_ you _about it.”_

_Dan gave Brian a skeptical stink-eye. “I don’t like what you’re implying. I also don’t know what you’re implying. But I don’t like it.”_

_“Fine._ Fine _,” Brian groaned. “I’m taking this job because… I don’t want to leave you behind.”_

 _All of the air left Dan’s lungs at once, like he’d been hit by a bus. “You don’t… Brian,_ what _? You can’t just not teach at fucking Harvard or wherever because of_ me _. That’s insane! I’d never ask you to do that!”_

 _“See, I_ told _you you’d get all_ you _about it.” Brian chugged the last of his beer and set the bottle aside. “Of course you’d never ask me to do that. You think every birthday present is too expensive. You_ apologize _when I bring you takeout because you skipped another meal and we both know we’re out of bread and peanut butter. Sometimes I think you’d stop breathing if it meant you’d be less conspicuous.”_

 _Brian had been staring at the horizon, but he turned the full force of his icy blues on Dan, and that was discomfiting. “What_ would _you do, if I took a teaching position and left? Try to start another band? Play nights and weekends at dive bars and stock shelves at Duane Reade, stoned off your ass?”_

_“So you’re not going to take your dream job so you can like, be my second dad? That’s… That’s asinine, Brian, and yeah, I got that from the word-a-day calendar, too.” Dan was supposed to feel touched by the gesture, he realized, but he didn’t. He felt defensive, and also like a jerk for feeling defensive, which made the entire spiral worse._

_“No, I’m going to take_ this _job and_ hire _you, you fucking moron,” Brian snapped, punching him in his scrawny shoulder._

_That was not what Dan expected to hear. “Oh,” he mumbled, rubbing the spot where he’d been hit._

_Brian took one of Dan’s hands between both of his. “I want to take this job and hire you because I can count on you. I know you’ll tell me to fuck off if I deserve it, because everyone else is going to see the PhD and my general demeanor and they won’t keep me honest. I know you’ll work your ass off because the only person you hate letting down more than your grandmother is me, for reasons you’ll never be able to articulate and I’ll never be able to understand. We might not be making music together, but I… I still need you.”_

_Dan was crying in earnest now, hot tears on both of his cheeks. He blinked furiously as Brian blurred out of view. “Brian, that’s… that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. The nicest thing_ anyone’s _ever said.”_

_“Well, live it up, because I’m not saying it again.” Brian’s inflection was deadpan, but Dan knew he meant every word. He put their hands down in their respective laps and took a deep breath. “So? Are you in?”_

_Dan swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. “Fuck yeah I am.” He wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to, exactly, or that he deserved Brian’s oversized faith, but he would do everything he could to earn it._

_He would even be kind enough not to blast Subdivisions at the break of dawn when Brian was retching in the bathroom tomorrow._

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Welcome to what will be a many part fic that combines my truly embarrassing encyclopedic knowledge of baseball and my love for a grump and a not so grump. I'll be sure to put notes at the end of chapters if I refer to some shorthand, colloquialism or other baseball term/rule that isn't apparently obvious. If I forget and something confuses you, tell me in the comments and I'll be sure to add it! 
> 
> Here are some to start with:
> 
> * Spring Training for Major League baseball takes place in Florida for East Coast teams, and Arizona for West Coast teams, generally speaking. Pitchers and catchers "report" in late February, and games that don't count are played through March.
> 
> * Major League teams have "farm systems", with a hierarchy of minor league teams based on experience and/or skill: short season or fall league, Single-A (divided between Low-A and High-A), Double-A, and Triple-A. Arin spent his first few seasons in Single-A after graduating high school.
> 
> * The Indianapolis Devils are a fictional team that I have made up, which includes their farm system (i.e. the Jersey City Sparks, where Arin is headed). They play in the National League, Central division. No, I did not balance all of the other divisions to compensate. Yet.
> 
> * Dan and Arin both refer to Baseball Prospectus' Top 100 prospect list. This is a highly regarded independent website that ranks young players across the major leagues. Making the list is a capital B, capital D Big Deal, especially for stat nerds, of which Brian is one. 
> 
> * It's commonly known among athletes and fans that making the cover of Sports Illustrated is considered a "jinx" - you'll get hurt, or your team will be terrible, or you'll lose the championship. Arin knows what's up.


End file.
